Ever have a completely random happening occur that just blew your mind because of the timing?

Synchronicity – it might well be responsible for many events in your life. It’s a system that operates outside of the normal cause and effect relationship that is so commonly seen in our daily routines.

Synchronicity is off the grid. It’s a way cooler way of looking at how events happen. With synchronicity, events are related through meaning but not necessarily occurring in a specific time sequence. There’s no discernible causal connection.

It can be the universe reaching out to assist when you’re in need. It’s mysterious – something that seemingly appears out of random chance but usually with great and/or personal meaning. Is it an element of spirituality, collective unconscious, the akashic records or magic? Call it what you will but some occurrences seem far too random to be written off as mere happenstance. Think of synchronicity as an enormous universal mathematical equation that we’ve yet to solve – the secret to many of the details of our lives.

Thinking about calling a friend you haven’t spoken to in a few years and suddenly the phone rings and the friend has called you? That’s synchronicity. Been considering the church mission trip to Akureyri, Iceland and then you overhear a couple in a restaurant talking about how nice their trip to Akureyri, Iceland was? Synchronicity. Remember The Notebook (we know she made you watch it one night)? Synchronicity is a girl about to get married, years removed from seeing the man she truly loved, and then finding a newspaper that says “OLD SEABROOK HOME FULLY RESTORED”. You know the rest.

Synchronicity was first coined by psychologist, Carl Jung – and it got a nice bit of promotion by rock artists, The Police.

Synchronicity II and The Police

Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner was an English teacher turned rockstar. He would become far better known as Sting, lead singer and bass player for the hugely successful band known as The Police.

One of the band’s many hits was Synchronicity II, released in 1983. It turned a whole generation of kids on to the meaning of synchronicity. The lyrics were sheer genius – a striking look at domestic crisis.

Verse 1: Another suburban family morning – Grandmother screaming at the wall
We have to shout above the din of our rice crispies
We can’t hear anything at all

Mother chants her litany of boredom and frustration
But we know all her suicides are fake
Daddy only stares into the distance
There’s only so.much heartache he can take

Many miles away – Something crawls from the slime
At the bottom of a dark Scottish lake

Verse 1 Translation:
The song starts with the introduction to Daddy and his family. After conveying the dysfunction in the family, we’re finally introduced to something miles away – completely unrelated – it’s crawling from the slime, in the same way that something is festering in daddy.

The secretaries pout and preen like cheap tarts in a red light street
But all he ever thinks to do is watch

And every single meeting with his so-called superior
Is a humiliating kick in the crotch

Many miles away – Something crawls to the surface
Of a dark Scottish loch

Verse 2 Translation:
Dad doesn’t only have a crappy family life – his job sucks too. He’s pretty darned unhappy about every facet of his life. He feels greater angst.

Meanwhile, that thing in the lake is the Loch – as in Loch Ness Monster – and he’s now crawled to the surface. There’s a very real danger that’s increasingly growing.

Verse 3:Another working day has ended – Only the rush hour hell to face
Packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes
Contestants in a suicidal race

Daddy grips the wheel and stares alone into the distance
He knows that something somewhere has to break

He sees the family home now looming in his headlights
The pain upstairs that makes his eyeballs ache

Many miles away
There’s a shadow on the door
Of a cottage on the shore
Of a dark Scottish lake
Many miles away, many miles away

Verse 3 Translation:
Dad is tired of the same routine. It’s worse than routine. He sees people as “lemmings in shiny metal boxes” and views society as a “suicidal race”.

His serfdom and family life have reached a new low. He sees the family home on this drive and he can’t take it any more. The “pain upstairs” is likely the everyday occurrences that plagued him – the nagging wife, the crazy Grandmother – and like a man gone mad, his eyeballs now hurt from it. You might see him as gritting his teeth, rubbing his eyes hard and likely going completely insane.

Meanwhile.. there’s a shadow on the door of the cottage. The Loch Ness Monster has arrived.

In both cases, bloodshed seems imminent. Two stories, about to have the same horrifying ending despite being completely unrelated – or was there a bit of synchronicity involved?

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